A wireless headset user wishing to make a call in a “hotspot”, as are available in many hotels, convention centers, coffee shops, airport terminals, etc., needs to log in and be authorized to use the hotspot services. This procedure often involves billing the user's credit card for the service for some period of time, ranging from one hour of service to a recurrent service plan.
Once connected to the hotspot, the user must manually navigate to the user's VoIP provider web site and log into the user's VoIP account. However, the headset user may not have access to a display device and keyboard, such as a notebook personal computer, pocket PC, personal digital assistant (PDA), or a cellular telephone equipped with a wireless interface needed to navigate the login screens and enter the billing information.
Even if the user has such a device, once the login procedure is finished, some means of transferring the authorization from the display device to the wireless headset is required. It is presumed that incorporating a full keyboard and graphical user interface within a wireless headset is physically infeasible. Previous solutions have included the use of a corded headset or a Bluetooth wireless headset connected to a soft phone operating on a laptop computer, pocket PC, PDA, etc. All of these solutions have required an external device and the user to manually enter the various parameters into the fields by hand.
Thus, a system, apparatus, and method to automatically access a hotspot and login to a VoIP account to gain authorization for VoIP telephony is highly desirable.